CHRIS POWELL: Foes of 'Obamacare' hasten 'single payer

Rather than wait for the Supreme Court to resolve the constitutionality of the tentative national medical insurance system disparaged as "Obamacare," could its angriest opponents explain a few things?

Twenty years ago the principle of "Obamacare" -- coverage for all, arranged by individuals themselves through the private market, with the government subsidizing insurance for the poor or buying it for the recalcitrant -- was first advocated not by commies or socialists but by the country's foremost conservative study group, the Heritage Foundation. It was the alternative to the bureaucratic system proposed by the Clinton administration. Prominent conservative Republicans endorsed the Heritage plan because it got everybody covered without nationalizing the insurance business -- something that, incidentally, would have ruined Connecticut.

So why is this system so objectionable to conservative Republicans now? Is it that a Democratic president and Congress enacted it? It's not as if the Democrats wouldn't negotiate. They wanted a bipartisan deal so badly that they would have let Republicans write the legislation as long as it achieved coverage for everyone.

It's said that "Obamacare" is unprecedented for requiring people to buy insurance. But Social Security and Medicare are both national insurance systems and people are required to pay into them, while state laws require auto insurance. Like "Obamacare," those systems all set minimum coverage requirements.

The military draft has taken not just taxes but people's very lives despite the Constitution's prohibition of "involuntary servitude."

And of course government and the medically insured end up paying vast costs for the medically uninsured anyway through the cost shifting done by hospitals, insurers, and other medical providers. The difference is that many people without insurance wait so long and overwhelm emergency rooms as their conditions worsen and become more expensive to treat.

So what's the big deal if "Obamacare" tries to reduce those costs and, more important, reduce that human misery?

Indeed, what is the big deal about reducing misery in a country that finds money for a stupid imperial war every generation, for compensating government employees far better than most taxpayers, and for subsidizing everything from sports stadiums to college for slugs who passed high school only through social promotion?

Twenty years ago "Obamacare" was the conservative alternative to "Hillarycare." What is the conservative alternative offered by the opponents of "Obamacare" now? Nothing at all. So should the sick and poor and the non-poor who neglected to buy insurance and got sick just pound sand, if they have the strength? Should the non-poor be allowed to be that irresponsible and burdensome? Would Americans really begrudge sick people this much help? If so, what is the country for? As policy, survival of the fittest doesn't need a country.

Leading Britain in a struggle for survival, Winston Churchill, the greatest conservative of the age, knew that no decent people could leave their fellows to die in the street or become charity cases. Even as war raged he proposed what became Britain's national medical insurance system because, he declared, "healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."

In any case the opponents of "Obamacare" are only guaranteeing a "single-payer" system -- a system where government dictates everything and permits no individual choice, a system that really will include the now-only-mythical "death panels" -- once the government finishes impoverishing the country and makes a majority dependent on government not just for medical insurance but also for basic sustenance, destroying the private economy.

The part of the population employed by government or receiving transfer payments is already near 50 percent. A "single-payer" system is just another recession away. Worried as the collectivists may be about the Supreme Court at the moment, the intransigence of the supposed conservatives may let them wait in full confidence.